3+3+4 Symposium

Enhancing and Assessing Students' Learning Outcomes

By

Dr Y H Wong

Dr Humphry Hung

Mr Ken WongDept of Management & Marketing, Polytechnic University

The visual holistic conceptualization of students’ learning in a collaborative and instant feedback mode enhancing passive learning to active holistic experience

Introduction

Summary & objectives

Development

1. Preparation

2. Implementation

3. Assessment

Contribution

Scholarly & community

Summary & Conclusion

Ideally, a learning platform

can reach students wherever they are,

▪ using the devices that they want to use,

▪ adopting the visual conceptualization of what they have learned, and

with the system doing the summary work with the collaboration of the users together …. Dream or Fact?

Integrative system - Help students develop a more proactive

approach to learning by assisting students in developing the knowledge and skills in an

integrated holistic view necessary to work with others to solve problems.

Interactive mode - Discover and disseminate new interactive ways of

blended learning through the development of innovative teaching methods by combing

you-tube video delivery, e-questionnaire homework, real-life interviews, instant face and index feedback, e-learning experience and focus group discussion, etc.

Interesting feedback - Facilitate students in enhancing their self

learning skills in mastering & organizing learning materials by themselves on an interesting basis through diagrams and charts.

The exercise was conducted among students of 4 subjects (Personal Skills Development, Innovation and Product management, Sales management, Strategic Management) for both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The number of students involved was 306 students.

The common characteristic of above 4 subjects is concerned with human behaviour, such as well-being.

Our students need to have better understanding of their own total well-beings, which are implicit and hidden unless we have a system to uncover different well-being.

However, most tools are not integrated as a system and difficult to use. The gap is how to provide an instant user-friendly tool to our students.

We want to blend our face-to-face lecture with more interactive tools (video demonstration, e-exercise, e-questionnaires to uncover individual well-being with summaries in term of faces and various indicators, e-Follow up assessment survey plus focus group discussions).

In order to solve the learning problems, various phrases of activities and programs have been taken.

They are

a. Preparation & development

b. Implementation

c. Evaluation

To develop a tool based on a proactive approach by getting feedback from the students, who will then learn how to develop a holistic perspective to understand their own well-being

It is a pilot test in form of version of the main Face e-exercise.

The students computed the numerical values of three well-being components (Psychological, physical and financial well-being).

They were able to check their position in a scale and got description about their well-beings.

The pilot surveys were conducted among undergraduates and postgraduates students from Faculty of Business during 2005-09, e.g., the profile of the sample in 2009 is presented in the table below:

Pilot survey helped us to understand the difficulties faced by students. Based on their suggestions, some questions were simplified or changed. A short explanation of each index and the result were added. The results obtained from the pilot version were used to set

the range for the well-being indexes in the main e-exercise.

Pilot Test 2009

Level Subject

TOTALUndergraduates Postgraduates Formal Skills-based

Respondent 137 35 35 137 172

A website was established to facilitate integration, rethinking and dissemination of holistic visualized learning materials for business subjects and students in the Faculty of Business.

The site contains material, instant interactive feedback and content based on the idea of Visual Holistic blended learning, which refers to the combination of different modes of delivering e-content in a holistic system, in two e-Modes:

1. e-Homework and

2. You-tube video demonstration.

The establishment of a website open to PolyU only in order to provide the tool

to a wider range of staff and students to assist them in understanding their well-being by providing a comprehensive feedback which will guide them and help to apply the concept to both personal life planning & business setting.

The site is https://www2.polyu.edu.hk/edc/authws/obp/

e-Homework - An online exercise (Part of our homework assignments sample)(link: https://www2.polyu.edu.hk/edc/authws/obp/) is a major element of the homework. The exercise was conducted in the mode of instant interactivity.

All students have been provided with the link to the exercise. Detailed email with all the instructions for filling questionnaire had been sent to their PolyU accounts.

Youtube Video - We created a video in YouTube to promote the importance of WWW: Whole-life Well-being Watch index and implications of its index in the context of business planning as a demonstration.

The video link (Whole-life Well-being Watch) is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv7m5xscO0I

Our community service is to create a more complex e-exercise (including two more new measurement tools to uncover social and retirement dimensions) available for PolyU graduates and the general public to let them use the tool for whole life planning. Data gathered will be used to draw comparisons between

previous and new results by an individual. Based on these comparisons they will be able to have better

understanding of their well-being concept for applying effective managerial skills (for example, for our business graduates) or for improving understanding of the concept of Total well-being concept (for general public).

The link is: http://myweb.polyu.edu.hk/~msobl/obp/. This link is open to the public.

According to our e-learning survey, an average student spends 10-15 minutes to complete the exercise. After submitting the results, respondents can see their individual faces which are the visualization of his or her well-beings with various numerical results for all three dimensions of well-being. The results also include short explanations about their current

situations. They can compare their faces and results with others.

The e-exercise was used for comparison and assessment as required by the specifications of the project.

This exercise aims to get students’ involvement on their well-being and requires them to apply the concept to real-life business setting.

Comparison of Individual Well-being (Face) with Other

Reflection of Individual Well-being

Through several blended activities, students had chances to discover their own well-beings!

Almost 13% of students enjoy high levels of their well-beings.

▪ Nevertheless almost 8% of students were discovered to have poor lifestyles.

▪ More than 6% of students are evaluated to be below the standard.

The project has a potential to help all those students to learn together in sorting out similar problems.

Two major tasks for evaluating the outcome of our blended learning approach were:

a. Feedback e-Survey

b. Focus Group

The purpose of these tasks is to evaluate the visualized holistic conceptualizations of major perspectives and comments on the efficiency and effectiveness of the blended learning experience and process.

The e-survey was conducted among undergraduates and postgraduates students. The no. of questionnaires returned (response rate: 49%) is presented in the table below:

In general, the students have positive perceptions about the project and believe:

it is useful for their blended learning as the process is integrated with well-designed links between face-to-face teaching and

self independent learning in a dynamic e-context incorporating team’s collaboration in implementing project in both classroom & real business settings.

Level/Nature of

subject

Undergraduates

Postgraduates

Formal

Subjects

Skills-based

TOTA

L

No of Returned

Questionnaires 128 24 77 75 152

The purpose of the Focus Group Discussion was to meet students in person and to ask them what they really had learnt from the process of the Face e-exercise.

Total 30 students were invited to take part in the focus group. They were divided into 5 groups, led by 5 interviewers. Students appreciated the useful elements of the exercise

(e.g., user-friendly and funny feedback) and suggested areas for further improvement (e.g., some questions are too direct).

They were keen in giving some recommendations (e.g. including a new dimension of Social well-being for future measurement).

This Focus Group helped us to understand the needs of students and their perceptions of the learning process.

Our focus group and survey brought positive responses from students. 1. Majority of them agreed that e-exercise was easy to access and

comprehensive. 2. Most importantly they agree that the exercise has stimulated their

interest in particular subject 3. It also helped them to understand real self (such as weakness &

strength, competence & hidden personal problems).

They are indeed collaborators of this blend learning process. When they graduate from PolyU, they can still use the e-

tool for updated assessment of their well-being. The learning experience is beyond PolyU.

We have organized / participated in open forums and workshops for exchanges and sharing of visualized and active holistic learning materials for business subjects among lecturers and students in the Faculty of Business, PolyU and other non-profitable organization.

The focus was on the visualized holistic conceptualizations of our major tools and perspectives.

The scholarly activities are summarized as:

a. PolyU context

b. Business Education & Community context

Outcome-based Approach to Learning & Teaching: An Experience-sharing session on Teaching Strategic Management (Departmental Seminar)

to promote our visualized holistic approach in teaching management subject.

PolyUMOB Seminar

Exploring Possibilities for Mobile Learning at PolyU– to share the expertise and experience of our project in eLess context

The results of our well-being survey (in a conference paper, Segmenting Financial Services Clients by Relationship Positioning) were presented in Annual London Conference on Money, Economy and Management, Imperial College, London on July 9, 2009. The paper will be published in World Journal of Management.

Total Life Coaching Educational Workshop for The Family and Juvenile Service Association (held in Macau on 5/9/2009) - to share the expertise and experience of our project as a part of community services.

1. The blended exercise with various e-modes has adopted multi-approaches of communicating information to students and really getting involved all of them by providing unique one-to-one instant feedback. ▪ This approach enables the blended activities (from

watching a video to collaborating team interview jobs in a business context) to be more enjoyable and interesting.

2. The interactive exercise enhances students’ learning through instant response in a funny way.

3. The notion of visual faces aligns with the use of multi-sensory teaching techniques to promote active learning.

We blend above scholarly activities, e-learning & e-community services to provide a holistic platform for synergizing our teaching and learning experience in a theme of well-being and business application, which is one of big challenges facing all of our students.

Learning theory suggests that students learn best when they are dealing with current, immediate and personal issues.

Our project addresses these issues and involves our students in this integrative, interesting and interactive learning journey which will enable our students from today’s learners to tomorrow’s leaders.

Thank you